SHRINK CHAT: The Void, Crazy, Not Insane, God Told Me To & The Room

Can trauma split a mind so completely that a killer isn’t the same person who committed the crime?

Content note: discussion of serial murder, dissociative identity disorder and childhood abuse, the insanity defense, drug use, and a film about a suicide pact.

Cath opens with Horror Facts on The Cabin in the Woods, then a little research on why certain scents bring back childhood. Our buddy watch with the Discord crew is The Void (2016), the Canadian creature feature with crowdfunded practical effects. Then Cathy takes us through Crazy, Not Insane, the HBO documentary about psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis and her clash with Park Dietz over serial killer Arthur Shawcross. We close with a run of bad movies: I Melt with You with Rob Lowe and Thomas Jane, Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To (also known as Demon), and the Shudder thriller The Room.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about dissociation as a defense in tortured children, why the insanity defense is a legal question and not a clinical one, culpability, the value of a full biopsychosocial history, and how nostalgia can lift a low mood.

Covered in this episode:

• The Cabin in the Woods (2012) in Horror Facts with Cath
• Scent, nostalgia and mood
• The Void (2016), our buddy watch
• Crazy, Not Insane (2020): Dorothy Lewis, Park Dietz and Arthur Shawcross
• Dissociative identity disorder, trauma and culpability
• Insanity as a legal term, not a clinical one
• I Melt with You (2011) and the midlife crisis movie
• God Told Me To (1976), aka Demon
• The Room (2019) and the wish that goes wrong

Clinical themes: dissociation and DID, adverse childhood experiences, trauma and the developing brain, forensic assessment and malingering, criminal responsibility, scent-evoked nostalgia.

Corrections and updates: ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. Crazy, Not Insane was directed by Alex Gibney. Park Dietz is a forensic psychiatrist, as we caught on air; Andrea Yates’s 2002 conviction was overturned partly because of his mistaken testimony about a Law & Order episode. In I Melt with You, the friends made their pact in college in 1986, not at fourteen. In God Told Me To, Bernard Phillips isn’t the detective’s father; both are alien-born, and Phillips wants a child with his “brother.” The Room here is Christian Volckman’s 2019 film, not Tommy Wiseau’s.

Related episodes:

• PROFILE: Richard Kuklinski, The Iceman Part 1 The Jersey City Childhood
• FEMALE PSYCHOPATH: Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone & Jolly Jane Toppan
• VAMPIRES: Real Vampires, Emotional Vampires, Daybreakers & Thirst

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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